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The Justice Secretary accused the Home Secretary of making "laughable" and "childlike" comments about the Human Rights Act after she said a Bolivian had been allowed to stay in the UK because of his pet cat.

The Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, which is currently going through parliament, would impose a minimum six months sentence on adult who use a knife to threaten people.

Labour has laid an amendment to the bill that would extend that clause to those aged under 18.

Giving evidence to the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee yesterday, Mr Clarke said the Government was “still considering it”.

But asked why he was against suggestions by the Home Secretary and the Mayor to extend the proposals to under-18s, Mr Clarke added: "The idea that mandatory sentences now apply to certain types of offence, to young offenders, to children, to juveniles, is a bit of a leap for the British judicial system.

"The idea that a 13-year-old should come up before a court and the court be told that, unless there's something quite exceptional, you have no discretion here, this particular offence, which isn't the most serious offence, you should automatically be sent off, presumably in that case, to a secure children's home, does rather go against how we normally approach the sentencing of juveniles.

"The British system is based on a totally different approach to sentencing for juveniles.

"Mandatory sentences, therefore, we're considering where we are, but I've not leapt into agreeing with these various amendments"

He added that he was “not surprised” by suggestions that “judges go out of their way to find some way of getting around the mandatory sentence which Parliament has in its wisdom applied, no doubt because there was a firearms case in the newspapers a month before this legislation was passed”.

"In the end there's usually some proviso which the courts leap on in a case when the sentence is plainly wrong and don't apply it."

Shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan said: "Knife crime is of huge concern to communities around the country and is terrorising young people on our streets.

"We must send a clear message that threatening someone with a knife, whatever your age, is unacceptable and that you will be caught and punished.”